In this Dan Le Batard Show episode, the hosts debate whether the San Francisco 49ers should bring back wide receiver Brandon Ayuk after his unexplained absence, weighing team needs and locker room dynamics against questions about his mental health. They also discuss neurological symptoms in players, the NFL trade market, and a college football weekend of close games.
The hour closes with breaking news that ESPN and the College Football Playoff have agreed on a five-year deal expanding the field to 24 teams, which prompts debate over whether the change will weaken regular-season stakes and fan interest.
In this episode Dan Le Batard, Mike Ryan
This transcript of the 24-team playoff and Brandon Ayuk discussion was made with HappyScribe technology, the same kind that produces meeting minutes written by AI.
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If you want more football than we're giving you here over the, uh, 3 hours that we do this this morning. Coming up after postgame, we've got a new episode of Football America. It is live. It's Football America with Dave Damishank.
That's weird, right?
I want to ask you guys about something else that's weird. Uh, Trevion Henderson did not play yesterday, and I don't know if you guys have been reading what it is that has been coming out on Trevion Henderson. He's very young, and he's saying neurological symptoms. That gives me questions as to what headaches? What do you—what do you mean, neurological symptoms? What is happening that makes it that you're displaying neurological symptoms when all these guys tend to hide their injuries?
If you don't hide your injury—you see what happened with Christian Gonzalez yesterday? They are targeting you. And, uh, the reason I wanted to bring this up, because of how unsophisticated we are about covering some of this stuff, even though many of us like to play doctor on the internet, I feel like—and I wonder if you guys feel this way—I feel that Ayuk, before he returns to football, should sit in front of somebody and give a coherent explanation for why he was trying to destroy his career.
Like, I'd like to hear him explain what's going on with him instead of all these shadows where you find guys not wanting to talk about their injuries, trying to hide from us how hurt they are. When I saw Trevion Henderson not playing because of neurological symptoms, my first question was to have a bunch of other questions about, what symptoms are you showing? Because he says—he says he's encouraged that the doctors are telling him, "Well, you don't have to worry about anything." But he's not playing in the game.
And if you've got neurological symptoms, you got to worry about things. Like, whether what the doctors are saying doesn't mean very much, given that you're the one alone with your sleep at night who's feeling the things in your head. And I'm curious what they are, but they're concealed from us. We don't know what that means. Neurological symptoms, if I heard that, though, for someone not playing, I would obviously be just generally worried about my future in football if I was already feeling those this early in my career.
Yeah, that's like headache or dizzy, right? That's—
It's not just that. Like, you can have shakes. Your body can just not be firing the way that you want it to be. It's a—it's oftentimes when people don't know what's wrong with them, they go for neurological tests.
Well, very often, the way that medicine works—and you've heard me say before that doctors are practicing medicine—most often, the way that it works is they rule stuff out. It's not that they can tell you what it is immediately. It's that they start ruling stuff out. So they've given Trevion Henderson some news that makes him feel better about whatever it is that's scaring him, that's going on inside of his head. But are you guys with me that if Ayuk wants to play football in the NFL, there should be some sort of explanation for why it is?
Just a coherent explanation. What's been going on with you that you've been this active about destroying your career?
I—I don't think that the NFL should be requiring that. So I don't think it needs to be mandatory. But if I'm a team and I'm thinking about signing him, yes, that I would require—I need an explanation.
Oh, but I think that as sports fans, we would also like to have one, because the behavior has been fairly inexplicable. And you don't have a lot of examples of a team taking back guaranteed money because someone is being so uncooperative. It's not merely that I'd like him to give an answer to one question. It's that I'd like him to handle a bit of an interrogation on what was actually happening with you, not just a word salad about, you know, "I didn't like that they treated me X, Y, and Z."
I'd like to know how it is and why it is that he would be this active about destroying his career.
Right. You'd like to know that, but you could understand it's—it's like, it's not right for that to be mandatory.
I wasn't saying that it should be mandatory. I was saying that I would like one.
Yeah, we would—I think we'd all like it.
I—I would like to understand a little bit better what the hell was going on with Ayuk. San Francisco doesn't actually have to trade for a wide receiver. They have one in the building if he's functioning. They—they have one who has now returned, who is on their payroll. But yeah, you're all making the face. You can't—
Like, they're 7 and 1. Why? What's the point?
Well, they need wide receivers.
I know, but you're 7 and 1, and you're welcoming in a—I mean, just go back to George Kittel being asked about it last week. Like, you're—you're opening up a powder keg, potentially. And you're 7 and 1. Why?
Understood. And the answer is they need wide receivers.
I'd rather sign any wide receiver that's not on an active roster right now.
Yeah.
Give me one that didn't quit on my team.
Yeah.
That's also not coming off of injuries, and we haven't seen play football in a really long time.
I mean, if I'm San Francisco, I'd route Tyreek Hill. Right? Like, like—like they obviously, one thing, you know, allegedly beating up women is a lot worse than quitting on your team. But in an NFL locker room, the quitting on the team is actually worse.
Okay, so you guys prefer them to trade assets for a wide receiver than to try to work it out with the guy that they have under contract? You—you guys are all on board?
In this instance, I feel pretty strongly. I also don't know if they need someone with that high of upside. Like, I'm literally just saying any practice squad guy that they can go take from somewhere else. Clearly, they've been able to do it with a variety of different receivers. It's not like Brandon Ayuk is George Pickens. If that's the decision that they're trying to make to go get a number one, that's different.
You guys are missing something, though, on what it is that I continue to say when I give you the teams that are going to be in the market for a wide receiver. And all of them, uh, have various needs, okay? When I say it's the Seahawks, the Chiefs, the Rams, the 49ers, and the Patriots, three of those are in the same division. They're rivals. Like, the Rams, the 49ers, and Seattle all need the same thing. And so does Patrick Mahomes. I'm going to give you some stats here. The last four games of Patrick Mahomes: air yards on attempts, 3.6, 4.7, 4.7, and 3.6.
He's the only quarterback on record the last 20 years with under 5.0 air yards in four straight games on 30-plus attempts. Nobody else has even done that three straight times within a season of all the quarterbacks you've had over the last 20 years. And since week five—how's this for a stat? Since week five, Jordan Love has 18 completions of 20-plus yards. Patrick Mahomes has zero.
But why do that to your locker room? These players have done everything that you've asked of them. They're 7 and 1. And you're going to invite someone that's just going to be toxic in the locker room, someone that quit on you? We saw the reactions to that. Those guys have earned not having Brandon Ayuk around. We've been talking a lot about the Miami Hurricanes. They could use an edge rusher. They dismissed a five-star defensive end. They could use a wide receiver. They dis—they dismissed a productive wide receiver in Cam Von. You got to prioritize the locker room.
They seem to care, also, that team, about the way the players feel. Like, there was a really cool story where Shanahan was talking recently how they actually spoke to Juwan Jennings about making a trade for him. Like, they were allowed to speak to him, engage his interests, and he was like, "Not really happy here. I love you guys. You know, coach, you were great to me, but, like, I'm really happy where I am right now." And Shanahan was like, "Okay, cool. We—we won't do it then."
I'm not actually making an argument to the contrary of what it is that you guys are saying. I'm saying that there is a powder keg around these 49ers' locker room that has not properly explained to anybody in public what's been going on with him mentally. Like, it's not—no one has a coherent explanation for why the last two years of really unusual behavior would make it so that Brandon Ayuk would leave millions and millions of dollars of guaranteed money, uh, on the table, give it back to the 49ers because of whatever it is that's been going on.
I—I tied the two things together on purpose on Trevion Henderson. I don't believe that people in that sport who are behaving erratically, I'm now jumping to the conclusion that it's almost always because football has done something to them. And I'm going to be wrong in some of those instances, where it's just going to be somebody's just a jerk, somebody's just needs help with mental health, and it's not actually football. But I always assume it is football now, so more than ever now, because Marshall Faulk has Parkinson's and because they do these brain studies where everyone who died between—an NFL player who died between 2008 and 2023, that 75% of them have CTE.
Do you guys not assume? Do you not—do you think it's reckless to assume, if you had to guess and be right, that Brandon Ayuk, uh, is mentally scrambled because of football, or he's just a jerk who doesn't want his money?
I—I never, like, assume the things that we can't see. And the only thing that we've, I guess, seen is this is someone who's behaving like a jerk. So I—I side on that. Like, we're assuming he has mental illness.
So you don't—you're not at the point. See, this is—the reason I bring it up is because of this. I just got done telling you that that catch in the Notre Dame—non-catch in the Notre Dame-Miami game—that six years ago, that's something that I would have ruled a catch. But I've been watching six years of professional football, both college and the NFL, and since then, my mind has been changed over the last six years of information of how I process this stuff. So once upon a time, I would have looked at Ayuk and said, "Oh, diva wide receiver.
Oh, ego." An assortment of things. But the amount of information that is soaked—that is saturated—this particular coverage of this sport makes it so I've now swung the other way, and I assume erratic behavior is—that the roots of erratic behavior are not the human condition. It's the football condition.
Down here, Miami, uh, the Miami Hurricanes had a running back that was, like, a super pro guy, a good locker room guy, and then he had episodes. And that made me think, "Huh, football did that to him." But there are also people that everyone is like, "That guy's kind of off, and maybe football doesn't help." I—I certainly would be inclined to believe, like, football can't help, the same way that alcohol probably doesn't help this person. But it is—it is a little reckless to answer your question. We're trying to entertain this discourse, but some people are just off because they're off, and there's a mental health crisis that affects plenty of people that aren't playing football.
Didn't we have a really strange one here like that as well? I—I—I feel bad that I have no idea where he's at today or what's going on. But Devon Bess, right, where he was seemingly just a regular dude here, and then some things happened.
Yeah, airport incidents, public incidents, multiple public incidents where you're like—and in his possession, receiver playing physical football.
Right. But when Martin Lawrence is going through traffic and everyone's wondering what's happening to him, it's not because he's getting helmet-to-helmet hits.
People are assuming in that case it's Hollywood. Jason Taylor, the Hall of Famer, told us the story of being afraid of Larry Chester because Larry Chester was a 330-pound defensive tackle that everybody was a little bit afraid of. And Jason Taylor, one time furious with Larry Chester, threw a full Coke bottle at—or a Coke can at his chest and then ran away. Like, threw it at Larry Chester and then just ran off. There are all sorts of guys in locker rooms all over the place that are a little bit off.
The choice of that as a living is a little bit crazy. It's just choosing to be around that kind of—that kind of violence to fight other men for money. You have to—you have to be brave in a way that might suggest in some instances that some things are just generally off as a life choice.
To Zaz's point, especially when it comes to mental health matters, like, we're only entitled so much of an explanation. Players have their privacy, and they deserve that, even as juicy of a soap opera the whole Brandon Ayuk, San Francisco 49ers thing. But for Brandon Ayuk to continue his career, he will have to explain the situation to someone.
Are you sure?
Are you sure the football teams are all like, "Hey, as long as he could help us, I don't need to know anything." Are you sure?
I mean, it would be pretty reckless of the football team to do that, considering how this guy is being responded to by his teammates, right? Now, those are guys that kind of shy away from that. And Christian McCaffrey doesn't say things like that. And you could tell that Christian McCaffrey felt some sort of way. And that's one of your team leaders.
Oh, but Zaz has it right, though. In an NFL locker room, somehow quitting on your team is a worse crime than beating up your partner. Like, that's—what he's saying is so. There is—there is no worse crime in an NFL locker room than I can't count on the guy next to me. That's—that is the highest of the standards that you have. And all of those 49ers that we played the sound of, "Brandon Ayuk could help somebody. I just told you that what causes these things to—the morality compromises happen when there's desperation."
And you've got Seattle, the Rams, and San Francisco all need a wide receiver in that division, which is really good.
Well, this may surprise you. I think the most reckless thing that has been said in this segment is that Brandon Ayuk can definitively help you. I don't know that. I—I—I have so many questions about that when you consider the injuries and the time away from the game and everything that we've seen happen and how his teammates respond to him. I don't know that.
This is different than, like, Josh Gordon, right, where he would miss time, but every time he would come back from whatever was going on or whatever suspension, he would dominate the sport of football. We haven't seen that with Brandon Ayuk throughout the course of his career. He had a couple of stretches where he was a really good player, but he's also dealt with physical ailments throughout his career on top of, obviously, whatever's plaguing him mentally.
But when Mike says that you have no guarantees on one Brandon Ayuk is, "Go ahead and give me all the guys who are available in—in for trade here," when I'm talking about George Pickens, who didn't even play on Sunday, give me who it is when Seattle, the Rams, and San Francisco all need a wide receiver, when Patrick Mahomes needs a wide receiver, when you're talking about one piece away, what's available out there that you're saying to yourself has more guarantees than Ayuk has, understanding that none of the good receivers are available?
Like, every—all the teams that have good receivers and still have a chance aren't—you're not getting anyone from the Colts who's a good receiver.
You don't know that, though. Like, Downs is reportedly available. Pierce can certainly help teams.
I would call Washington on Stefon Diggs.
I would—I would really press Los Angeles on Ladd McConkie. Apparently, all the answers have been no, that the Chargers feel good about where they're positioned for next year.
They should.
And they don't want to give up on a guy like Ladd McConkie. It's one of those things. You don't know who's available until they tell you no.
The holidays should be about the people you love. Not mandatory work parties where I pretend to care about someone's kitchen renovation. Now's the time for those unexpected holiday side quests and enjoying a great-tasting light beer. Last year, mine was my cousin's garage, a Miller Lite, and a four-hour debate over the best Christmas movie. Dan would make it a segment, then argue the other side on purpose. Best night of the season. Tis Miller time! In that garage, I felt great. I took a sip, I looked around, and thought, "Yeah, this was the right call."
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Dan Le Batard.
If Daniel Day-Lewis did it, you'd be jerking off all over yourself.
Oh, come on.
Yeah, I would be.
Aggressive description.
Come on. I mean, what is—what is that?
I'm just saying.
You know what? You're just saying what?
That's me. Daniel Day-Lewis is something.
That's me.
I see that photo of Daniel Day-Lewis looking like Lincoln before he's about to start filming Lincoln. And you know what I do? I mean.
Mike Ryan.
I jerk off all over myself. That's what I do.
Lincoln, who you outed the other day.
Don't make this a rejoin.
This is the Dan Le Batard Show.
Can you guys give me an answer to this question? I want you all to picture the movie scene where somebody sees the entirety of a tsunami about to land on them, and they are clearly looking at what is the last moments of their life as something is going to engulf them.
Like a TCU player.
What is the thing that's coming out of that person's mouth as they are awed and sort of shocked by what is about to befall them?
Some people would have the reaction, "Oh, thank God."
Some people would. Others, I think, would say some form of, "Oh, my God." And it's what Scott Hansen said when he saw Mahomes holding his arm. When they went to the red zone, Mahomes just dropped back to pass and tried to actually throw it down the field. He's not done very much of that over the last few seasons. He tried to launch one, and not unlike Gardner Minshu, his arm got caught yesterday in the middle of throwing it. Scott Hansen's reaction on the red zone was the way that someone would react moments before the end of their life.
You know what? No, I would go with Jeff Daniels in "Speed" when the house blew up. I would just stand there like.
Oh, I love that scene. That's a—that's a perfect face for it, Roy.
Yeah.
What a movie.
Great pull.
What a movie.
You just stoically and silently stare straight ahead and just act the hell out of it by having your face show all of your emotion.
Exactly.
You wouldn't say, "Oh, my God," the way Scott Hansen did when he saw Patrick Mahomes just holding his right arm.
No, no words.
Man, that's such a great trivia pull. How'd you not know Boston College was in the ACC?
It's crazy to me. How do you know?
You know how much I would have put my entire bank account on you knowing that Boston College was in the ACC.
It's a real disappointment, Roy.
Conference USA, man.
Zaz, were you disappointed by college football this weekend?
Yeah.
And I have—I have a question here that's—that I'm admitting on the front end is ignorant. They were calling it shock wave Saturday. Do you guys know where shock waves start? Is it bombs? Is it—are there other places for shock waves? I'm—I am woefully ignorant when it comes to the definition of a shock wave, but they were calling it before the—before the game started on Saturday, they were calling it shock wave Saturday.
And Zaz, because of the expectation of shock wave Saturday, you left disappointed.
Dan, we first have breaking news in the world of college football. Heather Dinich reports the college football playoff and ESPN have agreed on a five-year, $1.7 billion deal that will expand the field to 24 teams in 2027, with ESPN the continued broadcast partner. And it also eliminates the power for conference championship games. An official announcement is expected soon.
Oh, my. Not very often where an entity pays over a billion dollars for something that they're not thrilled with. I know they'll be happy with the games, but they don't like this expansion.
The things going on in college football are, if you're just somebody who's a witness, a voyeur, they're funny. The SEC trying to put in a luxury tax, what are we doing? All the ways you're trying to suppress wages when that ship has sailed. And—and now the SEC talking about luxury taxes if you pay players too much as you can't pay them enough.
Look at—look at what just got said there. $1.7 billion for five years. And now that Protect College Sports Act is totally dead because of everything wrought by that orange, felonious, greedy, rapist, racist turd, allegedly. What is it, the orange that needed the allegedly?
Yes.
Or is it the turd?
Two words into it, I thought you were talking about Greg Sankey, and then I realized, nope.
I should have put orange first, allegedly.
I—I was disappointed, though, with this weekend. Like, it was—it was billed as, you know, the biggest weekend in years, like all-time weekend. And yeah, you had a couple good games, like Texas, Missouri, despite the final score. Texas, Missouri was a good game.
Holy War was good.
Holy War was good. You know about the Holy War? Holy War was good. Miami-Notre Dame ended up being great for half of football.
It's rare for a Holy War to be good.
Yeah. Well, it was good. Alabama-LSU, terrible. Oregon-Ohio State, terrible. Kentucky-Tennessee, terrible. I was at UGA-Ole Miss, terrible.
Yeah, that was terrible. UGA looks good. Alabama-LSU was just such a strange game. It was good. It was back and forth. It was tight. LSU takes a lead, and then the game totally unravels immediately after LSU takes their first lead in that game. Truly bizarre.
Right. There was, like, no scoring in the first half, and then things got out of hand late in the third quarter.
Can we just show Lane Kiffin arriving as the celebrity coach who has three losses? What are they now? Five and three? Are they four and three? Are they—how many—how many wins does LSU have?
Uh, six and three, right?
Josh Payte, when he was on with us, said that's a top-five talent roster in all of college football. And now Lane Kiffin has lost three times. Can we eliminate them? He came in with a real entourage of celebrity and fame. You got Kevin Costner. You got—you got Shaq. Look at.
Angel Reese, Paul Skeins, Livey Dunne.
And he's—and Lane is the one walking very slow, bringing in all of that celebrity. Again.
What a crew. Kevin Costner.
Yeah, Kevin Costner. Looking good.
Kevin Costner.
He's there.
I like it.
How old is Kevin Costner? Kevin Costner.
I love how Kevin Costner's, like, on his phone, though.
Got to be close to 70.
That's the Texan walk. Can't be in the moment.
71 years old.
Hey.
Robin Hood, Angel Reese's number. I would guarantee you that.
Robin Hood.
Costner. A legend.
Angel Reese is walking as if she knows she's cooler than all of them.
Because she is.
Yeah, 100%.
Have you seen Draft Day?
Oh, I just wanted his pics back.
I wanted to talk to you guys about what happened to Ohio State. As soon as Saiyan went down, so did their season. And I know a lot of alums. Ohio State's in an interesting position in that for 20 years here, I heard all the proud UM alums complain about the state of the program, and now a whole bunch of proud Ohio State alums are complaining about Ryan Day or complaining about Oregon, which isn't that good. We know they're not that good scoring. 38 unanswered, and they're coming after Ryan Day, and they're coming after Matt Patricia.
I think it ignores some things about their defense. You tell me, Zaz, if you think you'll take a hit on defense. If last year you had nine guys—I'm sorry, two years ago you had nine guys drafted, and then last year you have seven draft picks on your defense, you lose three of them first-round picks. Like, how are you—you think you're just allowed to get all the first-round picks every year? A wide receiver and on defense? Like, they won the championship with Urban Meyer with their third-string quarterback. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in college football.
They were so loaded that their third-string quarterback won the championship. If you lose seven draft picks from your defense and three of them are first-round picks, you're going to look a little bit like Miami looks on defense this year when they lose two first-round picks on the defensive line.
I—I don't think we even need to take it that far. If Julian Saiyan doesn't get hurt, you think they're losing to USC? You think they're losing at home to Oregon?
I do.
Yeah?
By the way, on the Oregon point, they would point to and say, in terms of opposing winning percentage, we have the most impressive record in the nation. And I think they're going to be, like, fringe CFP. So I'm with you. I don't—I think this is one of the worst Oregon teams that we've seen recently, but their resume isn't as nearly as bad. I—I think they have bigger issues than just the Saiyan thing. Like, Saiyan's bad if you get to him. Not average. He's a bad quarterback when you get to him. You just got to hope that you protect him the entire time. As Dan mentioned, that goes well beyond Saiyan over there. They lost generational talents.
That's why I said before the season, they're going to be a disappointment this year. They lost so much, and they replaced them with not very much, and they thought their coaches could handle it. But that fan base has never been on with Ryan Day.
Yeah.
They—they've always wanted a reason to push him out. The championship barely buys them any security there. And if he loses to Cal Whittingham, provided that Cal Whittingham knows that that's an important game, he's gone, I think.
Does he know?
He might not.
Does Whittingham know? Put it on the poll at Le Batard Show. Does Whittingham regret leaving Utah? And does Whittingham know that he's got Ohio State still on the schedule? Because it sounds like someone who's cashed in and doesn't know the history of the program here.
That's my job as a coach, to rally him back up and get him ready to, you know, compete for these last three games. And I don't know, is there any more trophies in these last three games? I don't think there's any more trophies, but anyway.
It—it really does sound like someone who was convinced to go live in Ann Arbor for a year, take the money, and then you'll hire another coach where you have time to look for someone because you got screwed with everything that's been said.
Oh, but how about those heady days when Whittingham was driving a motorcycle up onto the college game day set, and what he left in his wake is Utah's unbeaten.
Anyway.
Those are—those are—those are his players, and he's suffering losing to Michigan State.
Anyway.
You don't even know who's on your schedule, Whittingham.
Anyway.
You're almost as old as Kevin Costner.
Anyway.
If I know anything about college football, it's that Michigan-Ohio State game is the most important.
Anyway.
And he's just like, "All right, the final three games. Nothing really big, huh?"
So it wasn't shock wave Saturday?
No.
It didn't feel like it was—you were hyping it up as the greatest college football weekend of all time.
Don't put it on me like I'm the only one who thought this was going to be a good weekend in college football.
It was shock wave Saturday. You told me it was shock wave Saturday. What else has shock waves? Is it bombs? What else?
You have never heard the term shock wave Saturday come out of my mouth.
Definitionally, it's a compressional wave of high amplitude caused by a shock, as from an earthquake or explosion, to the medium through which the wave travels.
I thought it was going to be good.
I don't know.
It wasn't.
No. It was just normal. It was normal.
It was really good.
It was normal.
Any other weekend where you had, like, three ranked.
Well, college football's always really good.
Three ranked versus ranked games that end up going down to the wire the way that these did.
Sure.
Mizzou, Texas, Holy War, Miami-Notre Dame. That's a great weekend.
How many three-loss teams are going to be in the 12-team tournament, and how many seven-loss teams are going to be in the 24-team tournament?
I don't know. I was kind of mourning that Saturday the entire time because I'm like, man, this is so great. LSU's out now, I think. Ohio State is out now, I think. They can creep back into it. It's a 12-team. But then I realized, like, man, the biggest game, the most consequential game on the college football calendar as it pertains to the CFP in an expanded playoff field is Iowa-Northwestern.
Oh.
Iowa-Northwestern would have been the most consequential, "Hey, this is your playoff life game." And everything else would have just been like, "Oh, we can handle this. We can survive whatever happens."
Kind of like the way you have to win six games to get to a bowl game. If you lose five games, you're out of the 24.
Oh, no. You're wrong.
I don't care about how good you're—are you not in for this rule, though?
No.
Let's make the rule.
Duke won the ACC last year with five losses. There's going to be a seven-loss team in the 24 team.
I just think they should make the rule. Five losses, you're out of the tournament.
No more conference championship games.
Anyway.
It is kind of funny that Miami could ultimately go their entire time in the ACC without a conference championship win.
Dan Le Batard.
For five minutes, I was watching everyone just like, "Nope, not letting you in. Not letting you in." So when I got up there, I had to say something, and I said it. Cheaters never prosper.
Chris Curtie.
My buddy was saying, "Not today."
Yeah, but you're trapped.
Not today.
Okay, so you're trapped.
I think that was what he was adding.
Yeah, that was so much better.
I'm telling you, the response I got from this guy, what I said was amazing.
I like his phrasing.
He got him. Cheaters never prosper. This guy yelled as angry as he could, "I ain't cheating!"
This is the Dan Le Batard Show. What do you guys do with the breaking news from this hour, according to Heather Dinich, that ESPN four or five years has for $1.7 billion secured something that will start next year, which is a 24-team tournament that we can now agree, right? A 24-team tournament makes the Notre Dame-Miami game we just saw totally irrelevant, right?
It's not totally irrelevant.
For stakes.
You still want to have a buy, but yeah, not as good. Not as good.
It—it doesn't matter if you lose the game.
This stinks. This stinks. And I would be upset. Like ESPN is, behind closed doors, because the games won't actually have juice until, like, late November. You ripped away what was so exciting about this weekend, what's so great. Yeah, look, Miami can survive that. Notre Dame couldn't had they lost that game. That's why the loft and call is so huge. Notre Dame is probably out. And you don't have that in an expanded field. You're talking about teams like Duke being a college football playoff team.
You have—you have Duke playing for their college football playoff lives, I guess, on Saturday against Miami. And that becomes the marquee event. It's—this sucks.
So what?
This sucks. And it—we have had, in our lifetimes, facing major sports, huge issues. Concussion issue and Colin Kaepernick with the NFL. The NBA is now dealing with what the MLB dealt with, which is like, how's this game aging? We have to evolve over here. NHL with lockouts and accessibility. I think college football, whether they knew it or not, grew too big too fast. There was a crazy boom over the last two decades, and they are doing things right now that will ultimately make this boom and popularity recede.
And they are hurting the sport forever with what they are doing right now.
It is strange that for years, for decades, for decades, college football fans wanted a playoff, and we finally got to—and even when they added the 14-playoff, still calling for an expanded playoff. A long time. And then when we finally got there, everyone was really happy. And in just three years' time, it was like, yeah, we need to—we need to make everybody not happy anymore.
In listening to Skipper and Sampson with Pablo recently, they were talking about how ultimately, like, the games with stakes are all that matter. So when it's the NBA or Major League Baseball, MLB offers a ton of programming. NBA offers a ton of programming. That's just one part of the package. It's the playoff games and having those stakes that matter. So for ESPN, it doesn't really matter to them if the ratings are lower during the course of the regular season. 24-team playoff is going to get them all the money they need.
Well, this is—this is the thing that if you've listened to the Sporting Class with Sampson and Skipper, and it's a cold truth that cuts right through it, because the sports fan hates to feel like he or she doesn't matter, but the customer does not matter here. And to me, what's interesting about what just happened is, for several years now, as money has polluted and contaminated the sport, everyone's looked at me and said, "Dan, there's no problem here with all of the money.
College football is flourishing." As there haven't been enough rules, and the rules have all changed because we don't know what we're doing in terms of policing that money, everyone's like, "Dan, don't worry. Don't worry. College football's fine. It doesn't matter. It's more popular than it's ever been. It's the second biggest sport in America." But now they give you too much of something. It's gluttonous. And everyone looks at this and says, "Do not ruin my regular season. And what I need you to understand is you and we don't matter.
All that matters is that you can gamble on Saturdays, and television has its programming. And its programming is going to be there whether you're there or not. The guaranteed money is going to be there whether you're there or not." So we can complain all we want about this more than we complained about the money and the rules, but it is a weird thing to complain about, given that everybody wanted more than four. Everybody wanted more than four. We feel like we've got the right number where you're sitting there arguing about 12, 13, and 14, but we all know that we don't want to see Oklahoma State playing in one of these games because they snuck in at number 24 because they had a bunch of 60-point games when they just stole North Texas' team.
But I do think it's going to matter. I don't think the WWE gets close to what they got in their next TV rights contract. I don't think UFC gets close to what they got in their next TV contract. I think they're less accessible, and it's made the sport less watchable for what was a passionate fan base.
But Mike.
This is the most ardent passionate fan base. The ratings are already down, in part, for these games because people don't think that they matter that much. This is going to be a huge mistake, and my prediction is, in five years, it's going to go away because the business is going to start sliding in the wrong direction.
And this is where I think that you're wrong. Go ahead and show me all the television rights deals that go down as opposed to up. And you've got the streamers now competing the same way that you're going to have the Seahawks, Rams, and 49ers competing over who gets the wide receiver. The streamers want the programming. I'm sitting there watching on NBC the other day, Mike. I'm flipping through the channels, and out of nowhere, I've got Lakers-Sixers, or I've got—was it Lakers-Sixers? Yeah, I think it was Lakers-Sixers. I'm watching on NBC because all of these networks, all of them, it's not one of them, all of the networks and all the streamers, they want their sports programming.
I will say, look at what's happened with RSNs. Ask the Miami Heat if they're making more money right now. Every team in their local rights deals, the market has cratered. Now you can say, "Well, that's different than national." And yeah, the national thing is unsustainable. They're not getting that. MLS, that's going to go down the next time. They're not going to make it. And while you may say, "Well, Mike, you're identifying WWE, UFC, MLS. These are fringe sports." It's also the marketplace. And let's keep in mind what's happening with all these corporations.
Do you know how easy it is to collude when there's only three companies that are bidding for these things? You're not going to have a wayward tech company saying, "We need to make a huge impact, and we need to overpay." I'm telling you, this is not going to go in the right direction. This is going to be bad, and they will capitulate five years down the road.
Coaches love it, right? It's so easy now to be a head coach in these Power 4 conferences and now be able to claim that you're a playoff team. Like, it's made these coaches' jobs so much easier.
They told us that was the driving force behind this. Coaches complaining to their ADs.
They're going to love it.
"Hey, we've expanded these conferences. I'm playing really difficult games here. Why am I scheduling anybody non-conference? If I'm Ohio State, why am I scheduling Texas? I'm going to lose three games with this schedule in a world full of parity, and I need to make the playoff. I need to tell my fan base. I need to have a career. Everybody wants my head if I lose two games here."
This is what I'd like to do. Tomorrow, what I'd like to do as a show is I'd like to do the NFL rankings the way we do college football rankings. I want to pick the 12 best teams in football and rank them tomorrow. And what I'd like to do today is I'd like you guys to tell me, what's the argument right now between 25 and 24? Find for me who we're talking about when you say 24 teams are going to be in these playoffs because I'm telling you, you're putting in others receiving votes in the playoffs, and that's not right.
Like, you can't have others. If you put Memphis in these playoffs just because there are always others receiving votes, what's 24 and 25 going to be this year, given that every team in the SEC already has two losses?
Well, you're not down with North Texas making a playoff appearance?
I'd like to see their offense.
That'd be kind of awesome, actually.
I'd like to see their offense against somebody who's real.
Right now, it's LSU and SMU as 24 and 25. Your others receiving votes are Missouri, Duke, Oklahoma State, and Liberty-Vibberti.
I think that LSU is something that's going to do numbers with Lane Kiffin, even if they sneak into the playoffs as the 24th team, Mike. And can make a run. And can make a run.
They have two more ranked games. I'm not ready to say they're done.
They should add a play-in tournament.
Oh, yeah.
Where others receiving votes play each other to get the last spot.
Whoa.
And.
"I don't know. Anyway."
Dan has questions about the 49ers and their potential reunion. Also, there was a good Holy War, and news breaks about the 24-team playoff in the middle of the hour, so we get better breaking news than whatever Zaslow was doing with his breaking news last hour.
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